


Coming Out

by Aestheticdenbrough



Category: IT (1990), IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Apples to Apples, Coming Out, First Kiss, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Mike Hanlon, Gen, Meeting the Parents, Summer, Summer Vacation, Truth or Dare, end of summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 19:06:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17648252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aestheticdenbrough/pseuds/Aestheticdenbrough
Summary: Mike is new to the losers club, unlike some people that Eddie has known since nearly kindergarten. it doesn't stop Eddie from coming out to him first.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first work for the positive it rarepair celebration!

The last string of days in August always swing through time in a blur. The losers try just to spend as much of it together as they can, this summer is different than all of the others. This summer was a wild ride to say the least. They’ve learned a lot about each other. But as Eddie Kaspbrak has come to realize, they may have also learned a lot about themselves. Their circle is much different by the end of the summer as it was when the season began. There’s more people than before but it still feels as if there’s someone missing, that person is Beverly Marsh, who they’d befriended in June of this summer but it feels as if they’ve known each other a lifetime, she’s left Derry for her aunt’s place the week before. It was for the best, but doesn’t stop them missing her.

The sun began her descent out of the sky about an hour before now and now there’s hardly any light out to speak of, and nobody awake to hear the crickets except for the remaining six of the lucky seven. There’s Apples to Apples cards strewn about the barn floor. It’s become a nice place for them to hang out, at least after a little sweeping to unearth the dust from in between the floorboards. That’s been done, and now they’re getting a bit too tired to keep up their game. They all secretly wished they could have snagged a box of Cards Against Humanity, but they make do playing an almost equally as offensive game by being creative with the ones meant to be innocent.

Eddie starts to get disappointed when it comes to the time when Ben has to start on his walk home, he’s already gotten an extension on his curfew to stay as long as he did. Richie was getting a ride and Wentworth would take Bill home on the way. Stan calls for his mom about ten minutes after Ben’s departure. Stan is very consistent about his sleep schedule, he knew he wouldn’t last very long. It finally comes to only being Eddie and Mike sitting in the barn with the lightbulb on the ceiling keeping the humid space dimly lit. “You gotta go soon too?” Mike asks, starting to pull all the cards on the floor into one pile to try and get into a neat stack, but let’s face it, he keeps his cards in a gallon ziplock bag where they’ll inevitably become a mess again anyways.

Eddie frowns, his eyebrows wrinkling in his thought. “My ma’s probably not asleep yet, I’ll just go in quietly once she’s already passed out on the recliner,” he shrugs. The losers can only really guess the way Sonia Kaspbrak is based on how Eddie talks about her time to time, and they know that she’s at the very least a mighty unusual parent with a weird style of parenting. They do know that he tries to avoid her whenever he can, and they help cater to that want- really a need. He doesn’t need to express how she is to them for them to just get it, it’s what he loves so much about his friends. “I can’t sleep over though, church service tomorrow morning,” he says, miming a gag and shoving his pointer finger to the back of his throat as if to throw up. His mom always makes him attend the services sans the times she claims he’s too ill to leave the house. Sometimes though, she even makes him go then, ‘maybe the power of God can heal you, Eddiebear’.

Mike just nods, gathering up the red plastic cups where they’d had their Hawaiian Punch. He doesn’t get yelled at if he doesn’t clean up after his friends but he doesn’t want to attract mice and bugs into one of the only areas outside where they don’t always have them. He doesn’t so much mind them, but Eddie has gone off about the bubonic plague that was spread by rats on more than one occasion when they’d seen a rodent. He’d almost screamed at the top of his lungs when Richie picked it up and Bill had gone over to pet it. That’s when Mike decided he would at least try to keep them away when his friends are around. 

Eddie takes another sip at his own cup, not completely empty. He licks the little red tinted moustache it leaves on his upper lip, smiling sheepishly when he realized Mike had his eyes on him the entire time. “Y’know, Mike, these game nights are hard when you have a secret as big as mine, especially when we play truth or dare,” he says with a forlorn sigh, drinking off the last of his juice. He normally wouldn’t say something like that but it’s just he and Mike for now. He’s on the tail end of a sugar buzz and it’s late, he’s crashing hard and his filter has melted away.

Mike raises one of his eyebrows and it makes the smaller brunette chuckle. Only Stan, Mike, and Richie can do that with their eyebrows, Stan does it often to look quizzical, Richie does just for jokes. But it’s a rare sight for Mike to do it, and for some reason it’s a funny look on him. It might be because he’s usually either smiling or looking indifferent, not often confused. The closest it usually gets to that is when he’s pulling information he already knows out of his head, but that almost never warrants an eyebrow raise. “A secret you say?” he asks, though his tone is one that’s more inviting than prying. He’s a curious young man, but he does respect boundaries, after all he does have his own.

“I dunno, I’m not even really sure if it’s even a true secret sometimes,” he says, tapping the toes of his sneakers on the wood floor, his eyes travelling around the room. It’s a calm kind of tense, like the kind in the moment of silence they have at school on anniversaries of big and tragic events. It’s not as awkward as he thinks it could be, and it makes him a little more comfortable. His brain almost moves slowly before the words actually roll off his lips. “I think I’m gay,” he blurts out, looking Mike in the eye for only a moment before he looks over instead to the open barn door, trying to see if there’s any more stars in the sky than there had been a few seconds before.

Mike just swallows to somehow justify the silence that falls between the two of them. “Y’know, it’s alright to not be sure, and it’s alright to be gay too,” Mike finally says, trying his best to meet Eddie’s eyes again, it takes a while but finally Eddie does look back again. It seems he finally realizes what he’d said, and out loud to another person at that.

“I’m really sorry about that, Mike, I uh- my mom is probably asleep by now- I gotta go,” he says, jumping up from his spot on the floor, tripping over his own feet and tightening the laces on his sneakers before he hurries himself out before Mike can really say anything else. He’ll have to get over the feeling of embarrassment over night though, even if he can avoid his friends for the rest of summer, the start of the new school year starts the Monday after the next one.

His mom keeps him home for the next three days because she’d heard his panicked and exhausted breathing as he’d come back home and decided that his asthma must be going for the worst and he needs to rest. It may be in his favor though, it’s not pleasant but it hopefully gives Mike a chance to forget about their brief conversation. But Mike hasn’t.

Then comes the day, three days before September first, when they go to the school building to set up their lockers, trying to be more prepared than the other freshman. The nervousness that comes with starting high school for the first time surely doesn’t skip over “the lucky six”. Mike approaches Eddie in another part of the hallway, producing a piece of printer paper from his folder. It’s a printed out picture of a rainbow pride flag, they can only smile sheepishly at each other. “For the inside of your locker, in case you wanted to personalize it a little,” Mike says sheepishly.

Eddie just smiles back, taking it quickly to hide it. It doesn’t seem like he’s really going to put it up, but Mike doesn’t mind. It was a bit of a risky gesture, but it was worth a try, and at least he still kept it secret, and at least Eddie didn’t seem too too uncomfortable with it, at least Eddie would know he’s supportive and he’s been thinking about him. The first day of school comes on Monday and Mike peeks over at Eddie when they come in, stealing a glance at his locker, seeing the rainbow paper behind some books.


	2. Chapter 2

September comes with the return of warm toned leaves and the smell of old school books. It’s very clear that Mike doesn’t forget how Eddie had come out to him the month before, he recommends some books with gay protagonists, and all this stuff about how Shakespeare was bi and how all these people in history were. It’s sweet though despite the awkwardness.

October brings Stan and his pumpkin spice lattes and Mike inviting the losers to the barn to carve pumpkins. All of theirs end up looking relatively similar, though the challenge was to see who could recreate the classic jack o lantern face best. They decide that Bill is the winner, he is the artist after all. They wonder how he does it, most of the times his hands shake wildly, they used to always ask if he was nervous or if he’d had too much caffeine when they noticed, but now they realize it’s just a part of who he is.

November brings the first feeble flakes of winter snow. It’s quiet and goes by easily for all of them, the teachers go easy on them, only their first year of actual high school and nearly time for winter break. They secretly just plan to bombard them with much homework over winter break.

December brings the holiday season, they try not to talk about Christmas too much around Stan, but they also let him talk endlessly about Chanukah to even it out. They build snowmen. Richie, being Richie, gave his a carrot penis instead of a nose. Mike secretly moved it to the proper place on the face before they left the snow people for the public to see. They do a secret santa with each other, Eddie got Stan but he’d soon find out that Mike had gotten Eddie. He got him some running shoes with rainbow laces. For most people it would only come across like a fashion statement, but Eddie knows why Mike picked them for him.

January goes by almost too fast, and February brings some thinking. There’s a dance in the middle of the month, a Valentine’s day dance. Mike gets asked by a nice girl who volunteers in the library in fourth hour like he does. She’s nice and she’s conventionally attractive and he assumes he must be really lucky to be asked, but he’s not sure he likes her in that way.

After the dance his questioning goes all the way into March. He and that girl, Grace, had kissed at the dance, and at that he realized he really didn’t have a crush on her the way he thinks he should in order to date her. He thinks about it for weeks, but he eventually pushes it down to the back of his mind until-

April comes and it’s Bill’s birthday and they all hang out in the barn to have another game night in his honor, even Bev comes back down for birthdays. He decides that he wants the group to play another game of truth or dare. It’s all fine and dandy until they dare Mike to kiss someone in the circle, whoever he wants to kiss.

Beverly very obviously expects it to be herself, being the only girl, and nobody is out as anything but straight at this point in time. Mike sits there in a silent consideration at this point. The light above him feels like it’s the actual sun, like he’s going to get a painful sunburn under the pressure of this dare. He already is different from the group, different from Derry in general. He’s the only child to the only black family in the small town. He’s a nerd and he actually likes school, and he’s new to public school. But he tells himself it doesn’t matter. Reminds himself that he’s allowed to be happy and chase after what he at least thinks that he wants. 

He crawls across the circle and looks Eddie in the eyes, the deep brown swimming with surprise. “Eddie, can I kiss you?” he asks in a soft and shaky voice, blocking out everyone around him in this moment besides the boy in front of him. Even when Eddie had told him he hadn’t been sure. Mike is allowed to be not sure but it’s worth the try.

Eddie nods just as shakily as Mike’s voice had come out and leans forward to meet Mike’s lips. Neither of their lips are chapped or too dry, but neither of them are experienced kissers. It’s still nice, it’s smooth and quick, and they both close their eyes to block out the other losers so it’s not too painfully awkward. Mike wheezes in a breath after they pull away, hearing a muffled joke from Richie about how they must have switched bodies in that kiss because that only could sound like the result of Eddie’s asthma.

In late April they decide they do want to be together. In May Mike introduces Eddie to his parents again. This time not as his friend but as his boyfriend. William is surprised but still shakes Eddie’s hand with the same respect as he always has, and he congratulates Mike on being in a relationship and being happy. Jessica hugs both boys in a joined hug, nearly suffocating the two of them with her loving embrace. It’s a nice change on how Sonia treats Eddie. It’s obvious that they won’t be coming out to her, but for now, in that moment, it felt just fine anyways.


End file.
